Harbor of Grace offers unique and personalized treatment services for emergency professionals, so you can begin your path to recovery. Our clinical staff includes active and retired emergency personnel who can provide feedback and support to those who need it.

Firefighters Harbor of Grace recognizes that firefighters selflessly put their lives on the line to save people in danger. This type of work can take a tole on even the strongest individuals. We recognize that asking for support is not always easy, but our experienced professionals, which includes active and retired firefighters are here to help.

Military The potential of being exposed to traumatic stressors is an ever-present issue for individuals who choose the military as their occupation.

Harbor of Grace takes pride in helping our active and retired military. Our veteran community is here to help provide the experience and care you need. Paramedics deal with life or death situations on a daily basis, which can be physically and psychologically demanding.

We will focus on reducing the PTSD symptoms and their severity but these symptoms may not always disappear altogether. But we can definitely improve the lives of people with PTSD, and the psychosocial adjustments. We provide people with statistics so they know that they are not alone. And we also cover the common reaction to trauma.

So they know that their reaction is not so uncommon. We cover the cause and physiology of the PTSD. We help them identify the triggers of safety and avoidance behaviour. So they can learn to manage these. We also teach them breathing retraining and this is really important.

An important message we give them is that we will focus on treatment and how PTSD affects them today. We help them see that the past cannot change, and we can help them manage their life in the present and be better equipped for the future.

And we engage them in a daily exercise that they can practice. So they learn to practice the skill that becomes more routine and they can better manage stressful situations. When we cover the common reaction to trauma, we definitely cover the fear and anxiety.

Re-experiencing the trauma is common, this increased arousal, avoiding these anger problems mean irritability, being easily annoyed. We also recognize that their relationships are affected and many people will engage in alcohol and other drugs to manage their symptoms.

In terms of recognizing the triggers, we want to make sure that we use the different senses and different factors that involve in this trigger. So we pay attention to different sights, the smells, the places, the sounds, the physical reaction and activities and situations that are linked to the triggers.

They may have a few of them or they have all of them. Focusing on avoidance and safety behaviours are critical. We hear many times that people are staying away from malls, from movie theatres, sports arenas, restaurants and any places that tend to be crowded.

They want to be the one driving. People may avoid shopping late at night. In terms of safety behaviour, we see a lot of them tend to be sitting with a wall at their back.

They keep scanning for threats. Some of them carry a weapon. Some people also engage in patrolling the area around their home. They need to convince themselves that they are safe. To keep them grounded and to help them focus on different aspects of the situation, we teach them the slow breathing exercises.

They take a normal breath in through their nose while keeping the mouth closed. And they exhale slowly through the mouth. And we engage them to repeat this for about 10 minutes.

Then we assess their tension before and after this exercise. And the participants tell us that they do experience less tension after engaging in this. So during sessions when they become dysregulated, we may use that exercise. We also will engage in Exposure Therapy.

They have the perception that things may be dangerous. Things may indeed feel dangerous because of the past traumatic experiences that they had. But these things may not be dangerous themselves.

They just feel dangerous. So we will start with a very low anxiety-producing situation. They will stay in the exposure. And often they feel that the distress is down. And they will practice this on a daily basis. The exposure can be quite useful. We do a hierarchy of anxiety-provoking situations and we will start with the lowest provoking situation and gradually we will move up the ladder.

We tend to stay at the same level until there is at least a half of the intensity of anxiety that is reduced. We use a subjective unit of distress so they will tell us how distressed they feel from zero no distress to maximum distress. And we often give them an anchor. You know, zero would be watching their favourite TV show.

And one would be, for example, someone who has an issue with a crowded mall. That would be the most. And they will rate their distress. And we will focus on the same situation until they feel the distress is reduced by at least half.

And we will give them homework. We want them to be able to see that if staying in the same situation is that stressful, or if the intensity of the distress is reduced.

So we will instruct you to make sure your tongue falls to the bottom of your mouth. Let them loosen and fall. We instruct them to notice any sensation and any change that they may experience.

And this exercise can be done at any time and anywhere. So for example, if they are waiting for the bus, they can do that exercise. We will ask them to practice at least five times a day. We want them to practice outside of the anxiety-producing situation.

So that when they encounter an anxiety-producing situation, they are able to use these strategies. Self-talk is very important. We want them to use self-calming and reassuring statements.

For example:. So each person has their own favourites. We want them to have a couple of these handy to keep repeating to themselves.

To help veterans and military personnel with trauma, we also focus on grounding. They have to focus on the present using their different senses. We teach them to find a safe place. We will often have an imagery exercise that is the place that they can go to in their head that calms them.

A place that is safe. We raise their awareness of emotional numbing. In the past, there may have been instructed to leave their emotions aside.

They had tasks to accomplish. The problem is, after putting their emotions aside, they often lose the ability to know how they feel. To name the emotion of the experience, they are afraid that if they experience the emotion, it will become out of control.

But emotions and feelings matter in civilian life. They need to be able to communicate and express themselves. So we focus on it, the recognition and the expression of emotions. We also work on their best self-statement. Who is the person that they want to be? And we can help them select the attributes they have control over.

And we help them establish a road map. Many people with PTSD will abuse alcohol and other drugs. So we want to know how they use and why. They often have a lot of negative impacts after using substances.

And yet they continue to use that. Unfortunately, the nature of their job can sometimes be too much to comprehend, and the immense stress they go through makes them extremely susceptible to developing a habit of substance abuse.

Addiction is common among this group of professionals, but we at Fountain Hills Recovery have decided to do something about it. Instead, we want to improve their overall wellbeing, and that is not possible without addressing the source of their struggle.

A large percentage of these men and women suffer from PTSD, anxiety, and depression. These symptoms are caused by work-related traumatic events.